1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pharmacological composition for treating cancer cells, and particularly relates to a pharmacological composition consisting of solamargine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cancer is the No. 1 cause of death in Taiwan, wherein lung cancer and liver cancer are both major contributors. Official statistical results published in 1999 indicate that the average age of the patients suffering from cancer is gradually decreasing, and that the inhabitants of Taiwan are seriously threaten by various cancers. Scientists around the world are studying the mechanisms of cancer to develop effective drugs for curing or relieving the symptoms of cancers. Currently, many researchers are devoting themselves to finding some effective cancer treating components from herbs.
As mentioned above, liver cancer and lung cancer are the major cancers in Taiwan. The high occurrence of liver cancer in Taiwan relates to the chronic hepatitis caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV); the high occurrence of lung cancer is a worldwide tendency, especially in the Western countries. Lung cancer can be classified into small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), wherein 25% of lung cancer is SCLC. Because the SCLC cells have smaller size and grow faster than those of the NSCLC, and usually pervasively distributed in the central region of lung, it is difficult to surgically excise SCLC. Unfortunately, SCLC cells pervade to lymphatic tissue and other sites at an early stage, and therefore it is usually the terminal stage when the patient is diagnosed to be suffering from lung cancer.
However, while SCLC is highly sensitive to the present cancer-killing drugs, the drug-resistance of NSCLC cells is hard to overcome in clinical therapy. According to clinical experiences, most of the NSCLC patients can not be effectively controlled by drugs, and the average 5-years survival rate is less than 10%. It is important, therefore, to study and develop effective pharmacological composition to overcome the drug-resistant mechanism of NSCLC.
Due to the ineffectiveness of conventional cancer-killing drugs in improving the condition of cancer patients, scientist has turned to herbs. After screening the cytotoxicity of various components isolated from herbs to cancer cells, the inventors of this present application found that both the lung cancer cells and liver cancer cells are sensitive to solamargine, a steroid glycoalkaloid isolated from Solanum (Alzerreca and Hart, Toxicology Letter, 1982, 12: 151-155). Therefore, a pharmacological composition used to kill cancer cells, and especially lung cancer cells and liver cancer cells, can be developed based on solamargine.